What would you know if you didn’t know what you now know?/The state of the ancient world

A Multidisciplinary Contextualized Analysis of Select Passages From Genesis V2.0

[This is an excerpt from an exhaustive personal study of most of the first 9 chapters of the book of Genesis. This is a vastly expanded effort from the original version that can currently be found here downloadable for free. The purpose of this exercise is to compare a non-symbolic literal reading of the text to our current understanding of language, paleontology, and the physical sciences. Constructive discussion on the merits of this study is encouraged!]

What would you know if you didn’t know what you now know?

Due largely to advances in transportation and media, humankind has literally “seen it all”. Nowadays, with nearly worldwide access to the internet and all forms of educational and entertainment content, anyone can become familiar with any topic. Beyond the information itself, modern multimedia can reproduce or simulate the sights and sounds of almost anything that has ever existed and many things that have not. The average person today is exposed to so many ideas and visual experiences, including those real and imagined, that it is unlikely for one to witness something truly indescribable. Everyone now reading this book has exponentially greater access to this combination of general knowledge and experiential information than perhaps anyone at any other time in history.

But if we look back hardly more than 100 years ago, most people rarely traveled beyond a 10-mile radius in their lifetime. Outside of the needs of daily life and their particular trade, individuals would be exposed to little intellectual variety beyond what was required of them or that could be found locally in a library or museum. This resulted in the majority of people having a limited inventory of mental images and experiences and therefore less relatable vocabulary for expressing such ideas. Also, the knowledge base for a given community would be unique when compared to other geographical regions or employment specialties. With smaller and more individualized life experiences to reference, unusual observations would be more difficult to accurately describe to a culturally and regionally diverse audience.

This is the first challenge of historical contextual analysis: Taking into account a realistic consideration of what the knowledge base of a person who lived more than 3,000 years ago might be.

This is not to imply there is a lack of intelligence or ability to understand an extraordinary concept. On the contrary, there is little physiological difference between the capacity for knowledge and complex reasoning of humans today and those from millennia past. That we still study ancient philosophy and find relevance to texts like the Bible is proof of their persisting depth and complexity. What I’m referring to is the likely challenges in expressing a unique idea with fewer shared experiences from which to construct an analog to share with a diverse audience.

For example, consider any fantasy book or film series of recent popularity. When striking up a conversation with someone unfamiliar with that specific media will result in expressive limits. A simple phrase like, “Who are you calling scruffy looking?” will mean something galactically different depending on the experience of the audience. It is where we possess common reference knowledge that concepts (including humorous anecdotes) are easier to share (and funnier).

Now go further back, before the time of film, photography, or even books themselves. What common source material or life experience might one be able to use to describe a novel concept? Something to be understood by these ancient people will need to be relatable to one’s visual inventory, experiences, and within the scope of vocabulary common at the time.

The state of the ancient world

After doing our best to unlearn a few thousand years of interpretation and collective experience, we still need to consider the environmental context of the world we are trying to understand. Historical geography and archaeology are giving us insight into the ancient world in ever-growing detail. We may know more now about life and conditions during the Ice Age than anyone in recorded history since then.

Also, there is significant paleontological evidence showing that the earth has changed drastically over millennia. For example, the Sahara desert was a tropical grassland less than 6,000 years ago. That means the whole of Egypt was green during the lifetime of some of the mummies we have uncovered. If we had a photograph of Egyptian pyramids in the time they were built, one might mistake the setting for that of today’s tropically located Mayan pyramids of North America.

In Genesis, the author describes the ancient past beyond the time of recorded history. If we are to believe they are relaying accounts from antiquity, we would need to make an effort to understand how the region might be different from today and what changes have taken place over the time periods being considered.